ADONAIS.

["Adonais” was composed at Pisa during the early
days of June, 1821, and printed, with the author’s
name, at Pisa, ’with the types of Didot,’
by July 13, 1821. Part of the impression was sent
to the brothers Ollier for sale in London. An
exact reprint of this Pisa edition (a few typographical
errors only being corrected) was issued in 1829 by
Gee & Bridges, Cambridge, at the instance of Arthur
Hallam and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton).
The poem was included in Galignani’s edition
of “Coleridge, Shelley and Keats”, Paris,
1829, and by Mrs. Shelley in the “Poetical Works”
of 1839. Mrs. Shelley’s text presents three
important variations from that of the editio princeps.
In 1876 an edition of the “Adonais”, with
Introduction and Notes, was printed for private circulation
by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. Ten years later
a reprint ‘in exact facsimile’ of the Pisa
edition was edited with a Bibliographical Introduction
by Mr. T.J. Wise ("Shelley Society Publications”,
2nd Series, No. 1, Reeves & Turner, London, 1886).
Our text is that of the editio princeps, Pisa, 1821,
modified by Mrs. Shelley’s text of 1839.
The readings of the editio princeps, wherever superseded,
are recorded in the footnotes. The Editor’s
Notes at the end of the Volume 3 should be consulted.]

It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition
of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented
object to be classed among the writers of the highest
genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance
to the narrow principles of taste on which several
of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at
least that I am an impartial judge. I consider
the fragment of “Hyperion” as second to
nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same
years.

John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth
year, on the —­ of —­ 1821; and
was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of
the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which
is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers,
now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit
of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space
among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and
daisies. It might make one in love with death,
to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.